So I'm not one to brag about video game achievements but if there's one thing I don't mind bragging about it's the number of platinum trophies I've earned: 34. Yeah I know it's not that crazy awesome but keep in mind I do go to school, have a job and yeah a pretty awesome social life. So 34 is not too bad. I'm also a HUGE fan of Tomb Raider. As in Lara Croft is my favorite game character of all time. So much so that yes I might have named my cat Lara. So you can bet I was super excited for the new Tomb Raider that came out this week. And since I work at a certain video game store (we were told not to mention our work in social media so my work shall henceforth be known as That Game Store That Shall Not Be Named), I already had my eyes set on the Tomb Raider Standee.

And that was when my boss/good friend "Kanye" (no that is not his real name) decided to challenge me. TO A PLATINUM CONTEST. Pshh of course I accepted. Kanye has zero platinum trophies to his name. He and I actually competed on who could platinum Heavy Rain first. I won about a month after the game came out. He still has not even finished the game. He proposed that whomever platinumed Tomb Raider first who win the Tomb Raider standee and bragging rights. I swiftly accepted.

And well, last night finally came. It was the midnight release of Tomb Raider. And Naruto Shippuden, MLB 13 The Show, MLB 2K13 and Sim City. But the only game that mattered was Tomb Raider.

I got to my store at 10:00pm with some Wendy's for Kanye who had been there all day. Tomb Raider was already in our store PS3 and a customer was playing it. I started looking at the Collector's Strategy guides Kanye had just found. $36.99. I calculated my discounts in my head: employee discount: 15%, plus my rewards card and the fact that I was buying it with the game…I couldn't remember which discount stacked my employee discount but fuck it. You get Lara's necklace and an extra multiplayer character. So I bought the guide.

The way we run midnights at our store is pretty simple. Customers have until 10:00PM to preorder games and guarantee preorder bonuses. Then at 10:00PM we start "selling" the game meaning we ring it up as normal. Then customers mill around until midnight and we can actually hand the game out. It makes the whole exchange go very smoothly. Now for Tomb Raider we got everyone out in five minutes. For Black Ops 2, it took an hour, people were placed in groups to make sure we weren't overwhelmed and we even got some State Troopers to come for a bit and make sure no one got rowdy.

So even though we were done by 12:10, we still stayed open until 12:30. I ran around putting all the new games away. Kanye and I barely spoke. It was almost time. Kanye put together the deposit. Excellent, that means he would most likely take it to the bank which would buy me some time. At 12:45 I clocked out, turned the lights off and locked up the back. Kanye and I walked to the parking lot together and said goodbyes and good lucks. I raced out of there. He lives 5-10 minutes away from the store. I live 20-25 minutes away.

When I got to my apartment complex, I raced around trying to find a parking spot, not an easy thing to do at one in the morning. I raced into my room, immediately turned on my PS3, ripped the plastic off the case and threw the game inside. I quickly selected the disc and OF COURSE there was already a patch to download. Good I thought to myself. I can change and grab a Red Bull. I checked Kanye's PSN account quickly. It confirmed he was already playing. I opened my guide to the achievements/trophy page and triple checked that there were no difficulty trophies. There are none so I selected Easy as my difficulty and off I went into Lara Croft's world. It was around 1:15AM.

I played Tomb Raider until 6:00AM the next morning. Kanye and I traded texts about funny things that happened or whenever we got a trophy. The story is engaging and fun and the gameplay is a combination of Far Cry 3 and Uncharted. As I played, I kept an eye on my guide, following the walkthrough picking up collectibles as I went. Normally I'd ignore the guide and just play through the story for fun and then return for collectibles but this was no normal game. My pride was at stake and damnit I wanted that Lara Croft standee! I ended up getting seven trophies while Kanye only had two when he stopped. It's now 11:30AM. I've been up since 10:30AM. Not much sleep but I'm too excited! I will probably try to play until 4:00PM and then do some of my homework for my 7:00PM class which I will attend (and stay until 9:30PM uggggh). I hope to progress to the 50% mark by tonight.